Chapter XXXIII

  Sunken Harbor and The Raft

  Adria sprinted toward the edge of the mountain and floated high above the dead forest with her ingraviboots, leaving the sight of the massive construction site behind. The blue particles in her eyes led her straight across the dry soil. The forest, empty of life except for snakes and insects, offered no witnesses to her flight. With each additional step, the pain from her wounds faded, thanks to the Curaten. She leapt, landed, and raced, repeating the combination several times before glimpsing her destination midair—a vast ocean reflecting the moonlight like a mirror stretching all the way to Malkuth.

  Only sentinels were allowed to venture that far into the country. Adria spent two seconds to dismiss the thought of turning back to her block after rationalizing her previous actions and the repercussions they could have. She faced two options: return home and wait for the Umbras and the Sentinels to come for her along with Bitlan, or move forward to try to save Corven and find the alters. If defeating the rest of them was necessary, so be it. She refused to put her grandfather at risk because of her recklessness, either they escaped or be imprisoned that night, perhaps even killed. There was no going back.

  Adria knew this might be a one-way trip. She sped up, the residual pain in her legs becoming more bearable than the original wounds. The bloodstain on her pants was vast; fortunately, they were dark. She couldn't afford to worry about changing clothes with everything at stake.

  Ten minutes later, as she bounced through the petrified woodland, a cement barrier rose, at least ten meters tall, old and broken, adorned with hundreds of graffiti artworks by rogue Dictadurians. At the top, a continuous window served as a watchtower. Nature was reclaiming the gray barriers as roots wrapped around them.

  She looked up, jumped effortlessly to the top of the wall, and entered through a broken window with caution, though not enough to avoid stepping on a piece of glass that covered most of the floor. The Dictadurian walked across the old workspace, mesmerized by the morbid beauty in front of her—The Sunken Harbor.

  The harbor, named by locals years after its destruction, witnessed a terrible battle during Copernus's uprising. An entire fleet lay at the bottom of the bay, destroyed by careless explosives. The harbor remained closed, a monument to the current president and his regime.

  A single ship floated, anchored behind the metallic corpses at a distance. The blue particles gathered and vibrated around it—Corven was held captive inside Gorbat’s superyacht, The Raft.

  As the moon set on the horizon behind that ship, a mist covered the water's surface. Adria stepped onto a balcony and jumped down to an old road below. It was empty, giving her a moment to plan her approach to the yacht. She looked down at her ingraviboots, her best purchase despite the initial doubts about their price, proving worth every cent of those ten thousand gatvits.

  Her path to the ship was rather enjoyable, leaping from and between the half-sunken and corroded ships, using the wreckage as stepping stones. Moss and algae, however, posed a challenge, making the surfaces slippery. Despite this, Adria advanced slowly and steadily, reaching the ship.

  From a moderate distance, she studied the carrier from a metallic rail protruding from the water, five meters away. The size of the ship was overwhelming, a black superyacht prohibited in all of Sectum, not just Dictaduria. Gorbat exploited his relationship with Roland Copernus explicitly.

  Adria spotted a few umbras on guard but remained unconcerned; they couldn't see her from their position. Her dark coat blended with the night, allowing her to leap onto the superyacht with an graviless boost to its fifth-deck rails, where she hung, climbed, and crawled onto the yacht.

  The hallway was guarded on each side. The noise alerted two of those umbras, and they moved toward Adria. She crouched and moved stealthily across the dark wood floors, hiding behind the nearest wall, using whatever time she had to plan.

  When they arrived, the intruder confronted them. The left guard, the nearest one, sprinted toward her, wielding a pair of nunchakus. "You should not be here!" bellowed another umbra, approaching with two machetes. Adria's cane met their onslaught, matching their attacks with her expert reflexes, reverberating with each clash. As they repeated their moves, she did the same with her defense, too fast for them to break with her rhythm. It took her a few moves to discern their patterns; then, she accelerated and counterattacking, expanded her borocane with strength and pointed it straight at their faces; making them grow and knocking them unconscious.

  She hid their unconscious bodies behind a corner before advancing, the blue particles pointing deep into the yacht's structure. She felt Corven's slow heartbeat as if her fingers were inside his heart. Ignoring if other umbras had noticed that altercation, Adria sprinted to the left side of the yacht, reached a dark metallic hatch wide open, stepped inside, grabbed the handle of the door, and closed it behind her as she headed to the lower decks.

  Dimmed warm lights allowed Adria to navigate through the luxurious passages' shadows, following the tracker crystaphere trail deeper into the ship, closer to Corven. The majority of the small cruise ship was unpopulated. Adria pondered whether she had diminished Gorbat’s forces, though it remained possible that the rest of the umbras could be at Negativus.

  Either way, it worked to her advantage. The renegade Dictadurian took a moment to admire the astonishing architecture of the yacht, enhanced with metals and dark crystals. Pristine wood floors led her through a path devoid of windows but filled with many doors. The particles guided her down several decks until Adria reached a crystal sliding door, maintaining her stealth, alert, just in case. Inside, a series of elevated pathways led her to a large mechanical room powering the entire boat. She reached a hanging intersection between four engines running on electrical energy; they made no noise which made her go even slower.

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  The remaining Umbras might have been in Negativus. In that case, she could escape unscathed. The tracker led her to the bottom of the engine room. She jumped, landing a few decks lower in a metallic mesh floor, her fall softened by her ingraviboots. The area was larger than expected, the four engines three times her size, imposing, powerful, yet apprehensively silent.

  Between two of those machines, there was a bronzamite door. Corven was on the other side—she could feel it. Using the same key stolen from Ghara, she pushed the door open without a problem, gaining access to another section of Gorbat’s yacht: a prison cell block.

  Opposite to Adria, surrounded by twenty cell doors, an Umbra sat behind a desk, his legs propped up. He slept, far less intimidating than the others, his hands resting on his enormous belly while he snored. The image gave her calm.

  With stealth, she approached the desk, circled it, and from a meter away, pointed her borocane at his neck, making it expand with a swift wrist movement. The guard reacted with a high-pitched scream before being knocked out; he fell to the ground with a thud.

  Adria confirmed he was unconscious, pleased with her tool's precision. That was easy. She turned back to the cells and noticed crystaphere particles pulsating beside one of the bronzamite cages, the fourth on the left side's second floor.

  After searching the Umbra's dark blue clothes, she found a thin, graphene-made key. Excited, she paced toward the stairs, reached the second floor, found the correct door, and slid the key into a slot on its side. The bdoor slid open, illuminating the dark space where Corven lay on the metallic ground, unconscious. After making sure the man was breathing, she studied his beaten body for the second time in less than twelve hours—poor guy. She empathized with his efforts to protect the location of the alters, likely the reason he was still alive.

  Kneeling beside Corven, Adria turned his body toward her. Parts of his face were swollen beyond recognition; he was oblivious to his surroundings. His left eyelid drooped over the void left by his missing eyeball, with dried blood resembling tears staining his skin. There was a chance he had urinated himself considering the acrid smell coming from him.

  "Why do you like this, Corven?" she whispered, applying pressure to his hand to signal her presence. "Don't answer. It's Adria; stay still. Before we leave, I'll heal what I can. Just breathe. You're safe with me."

  Corven squeezed Adria's hand, a tear escaping his intact eye. He was aware. Gone was the overall she had given him; in its place was a torn blue outfit from Negativus, an attire for Lux de Noctis, perhaps?

  "You have good taste, my friend. But today, we're not here for fashion," she said, removing his shirt to expose his torso. It wasn't as visceral as last time. Someone else had started healing him, though to what extent was unclear. Large bruises covered his skin, hinting at internal bleeding. Overwhelmed by the urge to heal him and prevent further damage, Adria acted quickly. She retrieved her new Curaten, pills from a black case, a cloth, and a bottle of water from her purse.

  First, she administered a blue pill, a curatex painkiller designed to heal his internal wounds from the inside. Noticing that both of Corven's legs were fractured in several places, she removed her belt and placed it between his teeth.

  "Bite," the medic instructed, as she set his left leg with expertise, trying to avoiding the wave of silent agony to ripple through him without a receptor for all that energy, pulling without giving previous notice. She repeated the process with his right leg, then addressed his dislocated shoulders, realigning the bones after he had lost consciousness once again.

  After cleaning and patching his eye cavity, Adria covered his body with Curaten, had him swallow a white pill, and stepped back to observe his reaction. His bones realigned with audible snaps; as his ribs set back into place.

  Once the contractions subsided, Adria helped him swallow a green pill. Thirty seconds later, Corven opened his remaining eye, disoriented.

  He rose from the ground, pushing her away. "Stop, stop!" Adria expected such a reaction.

  Corven's hand flew to his face, touching the void where his right eye had been. "It's okay; you're okay. Take a deep breath," she attempted to soothe him.

  "What are you doing here?" he managed after a minute, adjusting to the pain and trying to make sense of the situation.

  Good, he remembered Adria and seemed to grasp the rest. His hand lingered where his right eye used to be.

  "This is where I do my morning run; you just happened to show up in my route," she quipped, unable to resist the moment despite the circumstances.

  "What?" The notion sparked so many questions in Corven's mind that his head began to ache.

  "It's a joke. I came here to rescue you. Remember our meeting at Lux de Noctis? You never showed, so I went looking for you. Who would've thought I'd end up saving you twice in one day, huh?" Adria assisted him to his feet.

  "I'm the joke," he murmured, falling silent as he recalled the sequence of events after leaving Adria's block: his walk to Manson Avenue, the journey to Negativus, the visit to Oxen Plaza, then Kevary, returning to Negativus, hiding the alters, the Thai dinner, Lux de Noctis, the bartender, and their Fire Tornado. He felt compelled to explain himself to her.

  "I made it to Lux. But then, everything went black. I woke up in a circular room with arches where a group of Umbras interrogated me about the alters—Yistel, Olia, and Wuzan. They tortured me to the point I thought I was done for. I’d do anything to repay you."

  "Ha! I took care of all of them. Justice has been served," she said with pride. "Did you talk?"

  "If I had, I wouldn't be here," Corven replied, removing his hand from his eye socket. "The thought of getting a new eye from an alter helped me endure their torture after they took mine."

  His nostalgic tone reassured her that he had come to terms with his new reality. She examined his pupil, which reacted to light much faster than normal.

  "How do you feel?"

  "Energetic. What did you do to me?" he inquired, stretching his limbs.

  "I administered a painkiller curatex, realigned your bones, and used a bone pill to mend your fractures and internal bleeding. I treated your bruises and external injuries with Curaten, then had you ingest a green enhancer too nurture your skinny ass. You're welcome," she said, her expression reflecting delight in Corven's recovery.

  He attempted to respond, but she interrupted him.

  "Later, after we've escaped. It's time to leave." Adria got to her feet, preparing to cover their tracks.

  Corven used his torn shirt to wipe away the excess Curaten from his body, experiencing a sense of déjà vu. Adria exited the cell, with him trailing behind.

  ****

  That's it for Chapter XXXIII!

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  Aequitas and much love,

  Indigo Sapiens.

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  Malkuth: Planet Earth and Tenth Sephirah. It is the material and physical realm, its inhabitants seek to protect and preserve nature with a focus on equity and respect for natural resources.

  Aequiteism: It is a system of values and principles in Malkuthian society, based on the Kabbalah and the Edictum Vitae. This approach seeks to promote equitable, sustainable, and harmonious coexistence between technology, nature, and human beings.

  Naadi: Side effect of synthesis that allows humans to project their aura, enabling individuals to share their energy and emotions.

  Vis: It is the primordial energy that permeates everything. It represents the life force that flows through every being and element, connecting the macro and microcosms in an interdependent network.

  Sectum: Continent where the Extarri, the exiled, reside outside of aequiteism and hence, Malkuth. The continent is divided into four countries: Capitalia, Dictaduria, Imperia, and Eslavia, each representing different social systems.

  Dictaduria: Characterized by a dictatorial social system, where a group of leaders and elites exercises absolute control over the population, its resources and political decisions. Dictaduria stands out for the suppression of individual freedoms, exploitation, corruption in all levels of government and the lack of citizen participation in decision-making.

  Negativus: Clandestine subterranean city thriving under Dictaduria.

  Imperia: Reflects an a feudal and imperialistic social system, where a single central power controls other territories and societies. In Imperia, dominance and expansion of this power are prioritized, often at the expense of the autonomy and cultural diversity of its inhabitants.

  Eslavia: Follows a slave-based social system, where certain individuals are subjected to forced labor and exploited without respect for their rights and dignity.

  Capitalia: Represents a social system based on capitalist economy, where resources and wealth are controlled by private companies, and there is a marked economic inequality.

  Gatvits: Currency of Dictaduria.

  Onis: Currency of Imperia.

  Kabbalah: Technorganic entity guide and and companion that provides information and assistance to each individual in aequiteist society, promoting knowledge, equity and harmony as intended by the Edictum Vitae, the law of Malkuth.

  Merkabah: Advanced suit designed to assist the Sephirah in their individual tasks. It is specially created to improve efficiency in their day to day work.

  Crystaphere: Fusion of crystal and graphene through synthesis. Resistant, lightweight, and conductive material for various technological applications if activated.

  Sephirah: Refers to each branch of intellectual emanation in The Tree of Life (Yggdrasil) and the Kabbalah. Each Sephirah represents a fundamental principle that guides the life and worldview of this society.

  Gevurah: Fifth Sephirah in the path of the Kabbalah. Protectors of Malkuth, it's inhabitants and the Edictum Vitae, it's law. In charge of defending justice, and enforce the principles of an Aequiteist society. Seeks collective harmony and balance.

  Binah: Third Sephirah in the path of the Kabbalah. Applied to architects, shapers and planners, it highlights their role in the malleable construction of sustainable infrastructures in harmony with nature.

  Tipharet: Sixth branch in kabbalistic knowledge. Experts in agroecology and permaculture in aequiteist society. They work on sustainable food production, promoting environmentally friendly agricultural practices, in line with the principles of equity and harmony with nature stated in the E.V.

  Fishtank: Vehicles made of crystaphere with ingravitas technology.

  Levitator: Individual platforms for short distances. They use ingravitas technology to fly, offering efficient and eco-friendly personal transportation.

  Ingravitas: Advanced technology that controls and regulates gravity, allowing the creation of weightless zones and adjusting gravitational force of both small and large bodies of mass.

  Porter: Transportation method that uses the repelling forces of dark matter/energy with quantum stabilizers. It allows transporting any human or matter between two connecting points, creating an instantaneous bridge regardless of distance of time.

  Porterum: Collective of Porters, many times part of a larger structure with other services.

  Stagnum: A piece of land, could be anything from an individual space, a neighborhood or city floating in the sky thanks to Ingravitas tech.

  Domus: Levitating, houses powered with Ingravitas tech, often linked to a larger stagnum.